devMode.fm // DDEV for Local Development

Episode 133 / 2022.09.12

DDEV for Local Development

Andrew Welch, Ryan Irelan, Ben Croker, Matt Stein

#local dev #docker #DDEV #php

On this episode, we have Randy Fay, the maintainer and benevolent dictator of the DDEV project, which aims to make local development for PHP-based projects a breeze for individuals and teams.

We talk about the origins of DDEV, as well as its benefits over local development environments that are monolithic in nature. Due to how DDEV leverages Docker behind the scenes, it’s ideal for PHP-based CMS projects like Drupal, Typo3, WordPress, and app development frameworks like Laravel as well.

We go in depth on what those advantages are, and how DDEV has ambitions to bring the shrink-wrapping of project devops to outside the PHP world as well.

And there’s a special little treat at the end for Craft CMS users who want to leverage DDEV, so tune in!

0 comments

Ben Croker: The of introductions or.

Andrew: Welcome to devmo dot fm a podcast dedicated to the tools techniques and technologies used in modern web development I'm Andrew weltch from and ny studio one zero seven

Ben Croker: I'm Ben Kroger from put your lights on.

Randy Fay: And I'm Randy Fay I'm the maintainer of ddev a local development environment.

Andrew: I I'm gonna cut this out anyway, go go Ryan.

Ryan: Um, I'm Ryan ion from krafquest io.

Matt: I and I'm Matt Stein from bend organ.

Andrew: Um, and and today we have on a special guest Randy Fay the author and maintainer of dev how you doing Randy so I'm real pleased that you're able to come on with us today and talk to us a little bit about d dev but I got ah I got a scenario for you.

Randy Fay: Thank you I am doing good Great Great to be here with you.

Andrew: If you're out at a nightclub in Cancun Mexico and you get in. You're starting to get into a fight with a guy because he's he's harassing your girlfriend. He's got you pinned to the ground and then he's behind you. You see your huge friend named nutter walk up. He's a big neanderthal looking guy. And he he whispers in your ear I'll help you if you tell me what d dev is what would you say to him? yes.

Randy Fay: So You know I've been working on that for years. Um, so um, yeah, as you can imagine I have um, lots of friends who think it's just all magic. But what I say is that web developers people that work on the websites that everybody uses every day. They need to have a way to work on their website and the preferable way that they like to work on that website is on their own computer where they don't have to compete with anybody else or mess up anybody else's code or database or anything else that somebody else is doing on the website. Um, so um, yeah, yeah, so it helps people do that. So That's what Dev is is. It's a way for people to do that So they can work locally because.

Andrew: He's got his knee on your sternum. You're starting to lose consciousness.

Andrew: All right? So it's it's a way for us to work on projects locally is there any specific type of project like is it would it be something that I would use for node development or is it geared towards anything in particular.

Randy Fay: Well dev's dev's history is in the ph p world. So it came out of the ph p world. Um, and so ah, you know traditionally it would have been nginx or apache with ph p but. These days we're trying to support the node world and the node support gets better all the time. Um, and we'd like to support like Django and the python world. That's that's on the that's on the roadmap. But I mean deep history in the Ph P World ah really deep history in the Drupal world typo 3 came on later than that always tried to support wordpress. Um, but we're sure sure happy to have the kraf cms folks. Um, along for the ride. That's that's great too. But. Really deep roots in the php world and lots of people with lots of different ph p backgrounds use didev for their local development.

Andrew: I now why do I even need a local development environment like why? Why don't I just yolo it and install nginx install Mysql install postgres. You know why don't I just do that like what what advantages does a local dev environment give us and.

Randy Fay: Well um, you're with what you just described, you were creating a local development environment and there's nothing wrong with what you just described. So for people who know how to configure and nginx and fpm and everything else. Um.

Andrew: So right? True true.

Randy Fay: There's nothing wrong with that at all, why would you want to use Dev or a tool like it. Um I used I'm one of those people that used to just sling around and nginx configs and php configs and do it all on my own computer. And when I first came along when when didev was in its infancy I thought it was kind of silly like why would I use this docker stuff when I could just run the stuff on my machine. Well I eventually started realizing that my different projects might have different requirements.

Andrew: Yes.

Randy Fay: And 1 might want to run Apache and another one nginx another one ph p back then it was probably five point 6 and 7.0 or something like that different ph p versions different Mysql or Maria Db versions um and now with. With d dev the place where I started seeing the value early on was that you can have all these different projects with different configuration and your team has it all checked in. Um the biggest thing about the biggest thing about using a standard tool like d dev. Is that you don't have well normally a team lead spends like all their time fixing the junior developers development environment because they don't know how they don't know what to do and so now with didev or a tool like dev you check in the config.

Andrew: You yep.

Randy Fay: It's different for every project. They bring it up and they've already got it configured and so that's that's huge so just having the different projects with different configuration and having that checked in those are the big things about using D Dev or a tool like it. Um, as compared to slinging nginx like you were saying.

Andrew: You Yeah and the other thing that you can sometimes run into is in addition to what you were saying about the environment being wrapped around the project so you can have different environments for different projects is that if something goes wrong if you just install stuff locally then everything is down.

Randy Fay: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep, yep yep yeah or rebuilding it for you A junior Dev you know? So yeah.

Andrew: And nothing works and you're going to spend the next day rebuilding your whole computer before you can do anything? Yeah, and that's right Yeah, and that's no fun like no nobody likes doing that It's not fun. Having to reinstall all this stuff and having. Downtime just because you can't run the thing you know that's just ah, that's not a great thing.

Randy Fay: And and and and it's really different for different people some of us like doing that stuff and a lot of us really want to get on with their web development and it.

Andrew: Yeah I call it meta work. It's work that you have to do before you can do the actual work where you bring the value you know and I personally don't mind doing devops stuff. But if I'm trying to do something else for a client I Really don't want to do all that garbage before I can get up and running and do it. You know what am I going to do am I going to build them for.

Randy Fay: Yeah, yep.

Randy Fay: That's right.

Andrew: 6 hours I spent reinstalling stuff on my computer you know.

Randy Fay: And you know because I um maintain div and have to support it in lots of different environments I switch around between computers all the time and I don't ever care because it's just dev. It's checked in D Dev works the same on.

Andrew: You yep.

Randy Fay: Windows as it does on ws l two and linux and mac and m one or a MD 64 it works the same everywhere. So when I move between computers. The only thing that disorients me is the keyboard and other than that I'm fine. So.

Andrew: And yeah, and some people will say to themselves Well maybe something like D Dev makes sense if I'm on a team environment but it's just me working on my own but you raise a really good point that you are not really on your own you may work on multiple computers you may hire a subcontractor. Ah, you may have ah older projects that run older versions of whatever and you you don't want to have to try and reinstall everything just to run it. So I think it's fantastic that it kind of shrink drops I think it's fantastic that it kind of shrink wraps the devops along with the project now in order to do that.

Randy Fay: That's right I.

Andrew: My understanding is that it runs on top of this thing called Docker Why don't we just use Docker directly if that's what it's using why? why don't we just use docker.

Randy Fay: That Well, that's a totally legitimate technique. Um, what you I mean lots of people don't know what Docker is exactly but I like to explain to people that Docker is a way to run a bunch of little computers on your computer so you're.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah.

Randy Fay: Essentially for web developers that means running a whole bunch of little linux computers that are configured in a consistent way on your computer. So The web server and the Db server are little custom configured linux computers running on your computer in a controlled environment. And you can um, ah lots of teams want to do that. They um, they will get their own thing together and throw it together and then maintain it and there's nothing wrong with that if it meets their needs and somebody's willing to maintain it. It's that. It's that whole problem again is who's going to maintain it somebody's got to maintain it the person that made it is the one that's going to have to maintain it and when your project has a new requirement. They're going to have to go implement that in their environment whereas D Dev is always moving along always has support for new things. And in general it has the capabilities for you to customize everything using standard features instead of custom rolled features so it just goes back to who's maintaining it and how is it standardized that all of these techniques are legitimate.. The only thing that's not legitimate is working on the server as a whole team together. That's not legitimate. But.

Andrew: Ah, yeah, well yeah I mean ah, a local Dev environment is essentially replicating production so that you can work on the thing if you're installing everything directly on your computer then you have a monolithic environment. You have one environment that has all this stuff and it may or may not match production.

Ryan: To to speak.

Randy Fay: I Yeah yeah.

Andrew: And it certainly isn't going to match across projects using docker lets you effectively have a little mini myosql service and this one could be version 8 and this one could be version 5.7 and you could have a ah little mini computer that's running nginx and and another little one and that's running Apache and. Specific versions of them that are then tied to that particular project. Go ahead. Ah Ryan.

Randy Fay: That exactly.

Ryan: Yeah I was gonna say Randy ah, you're talking about maintaining so you're the maintainer of Dev now. Can you talk about like how it came about. Are you the the creator was it other individuals involved um, kind of what's the like the the origin story of the tool.

Randy Fay: It? yeah, it's yeah, that's a great It's a great question I went to work for a company named drud in like 16 or something like that and they wanted to be a hosting company. They wanted to be a hosting company using Kubernetes. Um, but they had this local development docker-based thing that was part of their big picture like they wanted local development to be part of the hosting environment. Um, and um it um. Like I say at first I thought well why would I do that because I already know how to sling this stuff and it was a little at the time it was a little slower than slinging it yourself and it didn't have the database separated. You know it was very young. It was very young. Well um. I liked it and it was actually the only thing that I really liked that they were working on and it became mine right? So within ah within a year. It was mine and I just and they very kindly supported the open source support of that for the next four years before they.

Andrew: I.

Randy Fay: Ah, lost their funding which was a year and a half ago or something like that and um so I've been maintaining it since it was very very young but I definitely didn't create it.

Andrew: I So it was a stray kitten in you put out the saucer of milk and then brought it into your house right.

Randy Fay: Ah, yeah I definitely got the kitten now.

Ryan: So ah, Randy when you when you started working on it I'm thinking of things like you know if you read up on the history of of git version control like how it was really just originally ah a set of scripts that helped them kind of do the things they wanted to do as they were working on the linux kernel. But did this start out as like with a vision of what it is right now or was it just a set of scripts that spun up and and built the containers the way you wanted them.

Randy Fay: And it was really just a little bit of Docker Compose um and it was dral focusedcused. Um, and no, there wasn't a vision behind it. It was an add on to the you know it was an add on to the hosting. It would because these people were web developers that were working on this hosting environment. They were thinking development as they did the other stuff and that was that was cool, but that's that's where it came from but he was very young so it looks like Ben's going to.

Ben Croker: Randy have a yeah I have a question. So someone recently said to me well the d the first d and d dev probably stands for drupal and I thought well maybe makes sense because drud of the company might be dral dev.

Randy Fay: Yeah.

Ben Croker: But then I thought well maybe it stands for Docker because Ddev is Docker based but then I realized well you you even provide alternatives to Docker so is is it Docker that underpins the whole thing or because yeah.

Randy Fay: It it it is It is actually docker that underpins Um Didev Um, but Docker in many different places. You don't have to have Docker desktop anymore. Um on on Mac you can use Colema or you can use Docker desktop.

Ben Croker: Right.

Ben Croker: Are.

Randy Fay: Um, so there's many ways to do it. But in all those cases. It's currently using docker meaning the docker open source project to do its work that may not be the first.

Ben Croker: I see so even these docker alternatives are simply Docker desktop alternatives.

Randy Fay: They're they're Docker wrappers of different kinds. Yeah so Kalima is the way we use it. It's a docker wrapper. Um, it's not the only way that it could be used. Um, but yeah, the way we're using everything right now is as Docker wrappers.

Ben Croker: Okay.

Randy Fay: But you don't have to have the closed source wrapper called docker desktop to use Div.

Ben Croker: And is that there thereby where the name came from does D Dev have to do with Docker or.

Randy Fay: Well now you make it? Yeah now you make it hard was ddo was the D for drud was the D for Docker was the D for drupal. Um I would have guessed docker but now that you've.

Ben Croker: What came first.

Randy Fay: Ah, that you got it I'm lost. Yeah I don't and I'm lost. But.

Andrew: Wait a minute you don't you don't know the answer. What.

Matt: You wait Randy aren't you the ah aren't you the authority on this do isn't it your you could just make something up now. It'll stick right.

Randy Fay: Ah, yeah, you just make it up. Yeah, yeah, it was definitely docker. Yeah yeah.

Ben Croker: All right? Let's go a ducker.

Matt: So well, we'll edit it to to use the last last part.

Randy Fay: There we go.

Ben Croker: Um, but the.

Andrew: I thought you're going to drop a bomb to say? no it really stands for diamond because that was the name of my first cat or something like that. Yeah.

Randy Fay: There are yeah right there you go.

Ben Croker: But Docker is really what makes it all work like magic the way it does right? that it's so portable and you can use it on any platform and take it anywhere with you or send it to your team.

Randy Fay: It is.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah.

Randy Fay: And Docker is the way that it is that portable and that it is that um, consistent across all these different operating systems. Um, and one way to look at didiv is it's just a Docker Wrapper Docker Compose Wrapper. You can look at that. But oh my goodness. There's a lot of years and a lot of code to make it work the way it does so it is It isn't It isn't just a wrapper but technically its technology is it's a wrapper on Docker Compose. So.

Ben Croker: Great.

Andrew: So I I think that what I would say in terms of why not to let me start again. I think what I would say in terms of the advantages that d dev offers you over docker in addition to what you said I think the 3 main ones that I would think of is. Number 1 you do not have to learn docker you can have something that will just get you up and running and again you don't want to do the metawork great you you can get all of the wonderful features of docker without having to learn all of the wonderful guts and internals. Um.

Randy Fay: So yep, yeah.

Andrew: The second one I would say is that it it offers you a way to name and route sites pretty transparently. Yes, you can do that in Docker but it takes ah another it takes another layer of stuff in order to be able to do it whereas now you can just have. My site D Dev or you know whatever you want to do it or ddev dot site and the third one I would say is that it takes care of the https for you. You don't have to worry about certificates like all of that kind of those are the. Big three that if I'm talking to somebody and they're asking me well you know should I just learn Docker or should I learn Ddev Those are the big 3 that I list in terms of advantages that you get from Dev right out of the box I mean what do you think am I crazy.

Matt: What one of the one of the things I appreciate about it too though just to pile on I know you weren't asking me is that it's It's like training wheels for Docker where somebody smarter than me figured out how to hey handy figured out how to how to like. Me working with my sites but there is Docker compose and there is stuff I can dive into without forgetting all the Docker commands and I can kind of wade into Docker based on something that's already been set up for me so I can completely ignore it or I can kind of use that as an avenue to peek under the hood and see what's going on with Docker compose and and the whole you know the way that everything's set up. Which is kind of a cool thing.

Randy Fay: I yeah I definitely um I really really want people not to have to think about what docker is to be able to use ddiv and I'm pretty sure that you can get a long ways down the line without. Understanding docker or anything else and I think a lot of people do um so yeah, that's definitely a goal. But yes, you can go beyond that and you can start to add features that aren't innately part of d dev that are easy to extend. Using Docker Docker Compose and ah and other technologies and I am.

Andrew: That's one of the things that I really appreciate about D Dev is that I've seen other local development environments whether they're docker based or not that you sort of get what you get and that's what's there and D Dev is just as easy to get up and running. But it doesn't make as many assumptions about it and if you really do want to use this custom Docker container. Great. Go ahead, you can do it. That's one of the things that I think is fantastic about the design and architecture of D Dev is that it's super Flexible. You can get up and running really quickly out of the box. But it's also super flexible when you need to. Get outside of that box in terms of what you need to do and it's very clear to me that this was written by people that are actually in the trenches doing the work and have run into all of these problems and and thus know the right way to architect it.

Randy Fay: It. It's the community. Um, that has made dea of what it is um, the reality is nobody knows how to make something that is what will be useful to people just out of the box. But the community's been contributing to this for years. So ah, Ddev doesn't have like perfect code or anything like that It has um, code that's like anything that's been around for a few years. It has compromises that were made at some point and.

Andrew: Right.

Randy Fay: That you kind of might wish they hadn't been. You know like anything else but Dev has the community talking all the time and so every feature in indeeda of is something the community ran up against and wanted and that's why it's there and so as the community continues. To contribute and ask and make um code contributions or docs contributions or all the other things that you can do um, that's what makes ddev what it is is I think that the community making that happen.

Andrew: It yeah, it's very apparent in the way it works and what what can sometimes happen is whether it's a local dev environment or or something else. You can have a group of people that are specking and writing the thing but they don't actually do what these other people are going to do with the product. And it is analogous to let's say you're a vegetarian and you adopt a cat for the first time and you're like oh great I'll make the cat dinner and you you dice up some some parsley you throw a little eggplant maybe a little avocado and you put it in front of the cat and the cat sniffs it and the cat looks at you like what the the hell is this now. And I've I've seen some projects like that where the development team isn't in touch with the people that are actually going to use it and you end up with something that it may be well done but it's not what they need and that's what the community contributions from d dev I think make it really clear that it's people that are are doing the thing that helped. To influence what is going on with it which I love it. I love that part of it.

Randy Fay: You? Yeah yep I.

Matt: So um, Randy I'm used to seeing you as as a guy and github with ah, you're having a great time straw hat responds within 30 seconds to any issue that ever comes up how much time do you actually spend ah like day to day is is is dev your full time. Ah. Love or how much how much time do you spend actually maintaining it.

Randy Fay: I yeah d dev is my full-time thing. Um and these days I actually get paid for it which is amazing and generous of platform sh to have started sponsoring me to maintain the project. Um I I am my. Ah, my aim is to spend about 30 hours a week and you you know from experience that I don't but I I love um I love working on it and that's why I'm there all the time and I love I love I just love doing something useful that helps people do what they want to do.

Andrew: And.

Randy Fay: And that makes them happy. It makes me happy to do that and that's um, probably the amount of time that I spend supporting people is um, it might be unsustainable for the future. But it's how I learn.

Randy Fay: What people experience right? and it's it's so valuable I just I love and it and it makes me feel valuable right? because I can help them and d dev can help them so I I love that um, whether it's sustainable or not is an important question and. 1 that we're always talking about in the ah in the dev advisory group which is next week on Wednesday and everybody's welcome. Um, that you know figuring out a long-term future for d dev that isn't just me is a. Fundamental thing that we want to think about and work on and make sure that it has a ah life that is that is beyond me and.

Ben Croker: So Randy when you say community are you referring to the users of ddev and perhaps people who are contributing to or is there something more formal. You mentioned? ah an advisory meeting or something. So. What what are you specifically referring to when you talk about community.

Randy Fay: Yeah, when I say community I'm talking about all the people that use d dev and and raise their hand and talk and contribute or ask or create issues or create bugs or whatever that they do the people that are the people that are using and needing d dev and that kind of thing so that's what I mean. The community. We have an advisory group and a budget group. Um the advisory group meets every second month. Um, and it's next Wednesday it's the ah it's the first first Wednesday of the month we meet and everybody's welcome to that. It's fairly informal but um, you know as you'd expect the people that show up are the people that care the most and so getting their view of what should be and is is really important and the the budget group. Is intended to help guide the financial future of the thing. So.

Ben Croker: So I've perhaps a related question to that and because everyone else or everyone here on this podcast is involved in or has been involved in sorry Matt Kraft cms and and. It seems that ddev can be used for php projects but also for various content management systems. So we've heard wordpress drupal and ah where most of us here are somehow involved in Kraft Cms and um. There was recently a Pr that you accepted to add a command to ddev which allows you to run craft console commands. So when you're meeting with this advisory group or when you're thinking about what kind of Pr is to accept. How are you making those decisions like. How how are you balancing balancing keeping the core lean and relevant versus you know people coming coming by and saying oh I have jolly cms and I'd like to add a jolly command you know for me and my friends how how are you. Differentiating between those kinds of requests and making decisions.

Randy Fay: I Yeah, that's a great question. Um I The fundamental thing is I try to understand what's the most useful to the most people and what can be done in a generic way as opposed to a specific code way. So.

Randy Fay: In in general. Um, like if you come and ask can we add this package to the web container I'll say no because we've got a feature that you just put it in the config yaml and that adds it in for you. Um, sometimes the answer is yes, but mostly. It's how can we solve this in a generic way. Um in the exact case that you're talking about the adding the craft command um normally the craft command would be hidden and only shown to people running craft. Um, so. For example drus which is the drupal equivalent only shows up for people running drupal and backdrop. Um, we just don't have that yet for craft and that's one of the fundamental reasons that I'm hoping that we get a ah a a project type. For craft I'm well aware that craft folks feel that they don't need it because they've always used dub and it worked fine and they didn't need it but it it would hide that craft command from other people and it would allow us to do things like. Um, specifying the upload dura The user Generateed Files Um, directory Um, ah, automatically or near automatically based on the project type as it does for the other project types. So um, yeah I mean I I probably.

Randy Fay: Um, you know I open source communities have a lot of different models for how they're set up and some of them have a lot of trouble making decisions some of them have are small and have. What you would call a benevolent dictator. Um some of them have no governance idea at all and essentially didav is a benevent benevolent dictatorship and I'm the dictator. And I really like to listen to what people want need and so people that make a good case for things and other people agree with them. It will get into dav also people who make Prs that solve a problem that. Scratches their itch. It usually gets in there there. There. There's probably a counter example or 2 but in general if they're scratching their own itch and it's a reasonable itch and they take the effort to do it. It gets in. Um.

Ben Croker: Um, right.

Ben Croker: So it sounds like in this case, perhaps it was a stepping stone adding the craft command was a stepping stone to getting a K craft project type which which would help to keep the php.

Randy Fay: Yep.

Randy Fay: So that's right, That's right? Yep yep that.

Ben Croker: Project type more generic in the way that it's intended to be.

Andrew: I Yeah I was actually going to ask you about that because I go to the Quickt start guide and it says check out the the quick starts for Cmss If you're using one and I'm looking at it and I don't see one for Kraf Cms is that something that you're planning to add.

Randy Fay: I I'm hoping that somebody from the craft community will do a Pr for it. Yeah yeah, oh no it it I mean that's just a Docs Pr that's all we need is just somebody to go and edit that page and add that and I would very much like that. Um.

Andrew: Oh so you So you are open to a Pr so.

Andrew: So it's literally just documentation that needs to be Pr oh wow.

Randy Fay: I Don't the the quick starts are yeah um, right now. Yeah, that's it. Um, you go click the little pencil on the quicks start page and edit it. Yeah in a.

Andrew: If um, if only we knew someone that did documentation for k craft cs Matt what's going on Matt I'm looking at you Matt.

Matt: Well I have some awkward news for you I've pivoted.

Ryan: You have a lot of time in your hands. Don't you Matt.

Matt: Ah I was I was going to ask if you were if you were ah Randy if you were prepping another benevolent dictator and you were you know you're getting them ready ah to to take the reins of d dev power. What are the things that they would need what what? Ah what.

Randy Fay: Well. Well I would go Ahead. Go ahead. Good. Oh I say you were saying if okay, go ahead.

Matt: What are the things that they would need to know what are the things that would not immediately be obvious about maintaining a project like this.

Andrew: Yeah, is it a game of Thrones kind of succession thing that it's going to be your first born heir or is it going to be whoever wins in battle or or what's the deal.

Randy Fay: Oh.

Randy Fay: 1 of the one of the the the bus factors for the ddiv project is a fundamental problem and that there's so much to know that that the I mean way beyond the code. Ah, the code comes in many varieties. You know it's go which is not usually familiar to I mean go is probably the biggest piece and that's not usually familiar to web developers. Um, and so it's a ah stretch there but we have um, a whole testing system. Every. Every pr gets every push gets tested on the mac m one on mac m d 64 it gets tested on linux. It gets test tested on linux arm 64 it gets tested on windows and ws l two and keeping that whole test. Um. All those test runners happy and running is a big deal and you can imagine it would it take a lot to teach that. Um, then there are the questions about just access to um how would somebody figure out how to have access. The systems that they need access to so one of my jobs for today because I'm trying to get ready for the meeting next week is to try to get the secrets that somebody would need if I get hit by a bus into a place where they would know where they are.

Randy Fay: And and of course it's not just that It's how do they know what secrets they need and how would they know how to use them and how would they know how to get them and how would whoever was taking the lead on it know who to go to that had the power to do what needed to be done. It's a um and that's something that a if you had a larger Organization. You would hope that some of that would have already been sorted out. Of course we all know many larger organizations where that is not at all sorted out and that they have the same problem but um.

Randy Fay: If I were if if I had the luxury of an up and coming um assistant dictator which I would love to have and by the way. Ah Dev does have opportunities for at this level at this time our our budget capabilities. Not huge, but we have some money in the bank and I would absolutely love to find somebody who had some time to spend to paid time to spend on the test subsystem for example or on the tests themselves I have a whole set of things that I think Or. Or on maintaining the ah D of get add-ons and learning how to maintain those? Um, So there are options like that. But if I had an actual somebody that would come along and learn how to learn how to maintain things and. Um, and make decisions I would probably start with the whole test runner subsystem and the tests themselves um and then of course learning all The. Ah, weird things that one doesn't know that one is the only one that knows about the code and why it is what it is.

Andrew: I yeah, it sounds like finding someone and getting them and giving them gradual access and would make sense and you know I'm going to offer you Matt Stein he is not of pure blood. He's he's not of pure blood.

Randy Fay: And there he is right there.

Andrew: But he is willing to try and become the hand of the king if that's something that you would be interested in doing and and I am just Goingnna just like in medieval times I'm just gonna give him to you. He does? yeah.

Randy Fay: Yeah, that's so kind of you. Wow that is so great.

Matt: That's that's very sweet I'd like to point out the hand of the King always dies so always murdered. So.

Randy Fay: Ah, ah, ah, but no, ah the the the the basic issue is huge um and important and it's taken seriously by me and by the you know by the advisory group and that but it's not easy. With a small budget um to figure out how to well a small budget and a small organization because I'd have to figure out how to I know I've done this before so I do know how to pay people in different parts of the world I Know how to pull that off. Um, but. Um, you know I have to I have to entice somebody to do it. Um, within the existing budget constraints now I know perfectly. Well that there are many organizations using D Dev who if they were um. If they were pushed a little harder than they have been would contribute in a significant way and that that could be done but ah, I'm really busy supporting the community and maintaining code and but I know that that it would be a valuable thing to do. Um I am actually.

Randy Fay: Um, as as you know platform dotsh the hosting company just stepped in of their own volition and ah decided to sponsor the project by paying me a salary this was in March I think or February or something. And it was a great great thing and I actually am floating proposals to have them put some management time in um and maybe some documentation and marketing time in. Um so I'm floating proposals on that because that's ah. That's an obvious way. But of course that's almost unfair hey you're giving a lot so shouldn't you give more It's so there's a little little trouble with that idea.

Andrew: Yeah, and it sounds like so many companies and then even more than that So many individuals rely on D Dev that I think if you did kind of rattle the cup a little bit. You would get that you would be able to get additional contributions but moreover. Getting some other people involved to help ease your burden and then also help with the succession type of thing would be a pretty nice thing to do and I'm glad to hear that you are on track doing that. So.

Randy Fay: We but we do have a ah funding technique that works fine. Um and github sponsors and if you go to the ddev page on on githubgithub.com Druddiev which is where the center of things is um, you'll see the ability to sponsor there. And we do have sponsorships somewhere in the range of 15 or $1600 a month. Um, which is great. Um, it's not enough to pay a developer's salary at current. You know, but it's it's wonderful and it's covered our infrastructure costs very nicely.

Andrew: You right.

Randy Fay: And it's growing. Ah ah a pot in the bank which can help um that can really help like when if we get a if we get somebody who's willing to spend a month or two months well we can do that for sure you know so that's good.

Andrew: You So it doesn't put up nag notices saying please contribute and it doesn't kill off your containers randomly to you know holding them hostage for donations. It doesn't do anything like that that.

Randy Fay: We don't even have a mention of it in indeed of itself. Yeah, just on the on the github page So you.

Andrew: I Yeah I'm obviously I'm joking about the the notices and killing off containers but putting a mention of it in Dev itself might not be a bad idea I mean it's something that I honestly didn't know about until you mentioned it but I would be perfectly willing to contribute. You know a monthly I'm not going to note.

Randy Fay: Yeah, yeah.

Andrew: I'm not gonna do no 1500 okay but I would definitely contribute something if I knew that it was there.

Randy Fay: You You know that's a good idea and you know we yeah I don't know whether you've seen this before but there is a ah dev. There's an upgrade available thing and um, if you I mean it could be done at the same time as that there's an upgraded available thing.

Andrew: Yep.

Randy Fay: Oh and by the way um you can sponsor ddev here and that wouldn't be. It's a good idea.

Andrew: I Think the documentation could be a decent place for it too. You know nothing outrageous, but just a nice little banner just because of how much people will refer to the documentation and yeah and people.

Randy Fay: I Yeah I'm not sure that's in the documentation. That's a good point I'm not sure that there's a reference to that? yeah.

Andrew: And people doing updates may or may not be the same people that are using it and just you know I think documentation might make sense potentially too. But we we got ryana here and his his blood sugars. A little bit low because he hasn't eaten his daily avocado but I know that he has done a number of training videos.

Randy Fay: It's a good idea.

Andrew: Using Dev and I just wanted to see what your experience was like doing that because you had to kind of go in there and figure out d dev is something you hadn't used before and what that experience was like and if you had any questions for Randy.

Ryan: Well I was just ah, pulling up the Docs and it seems like the docs were just redone maybe over the summer is that right? Randy yeah so um, so that's my first thing because I when I had originally written the the videos that I did it was using the old docs um, so this is.

Andrew: Yes.

Randy Fay: You? Yeah yep, yep, look yeah.

Ryan: This is amazing I think so my biggest takeaway um from digging in to to d dev is ah that it seemed to really ah, prioritize the developers experience like it seems like that was what it was all set up for is they sort of you know rise above. What everybody is scared of and underneath with Docker and and get to um and get to the stuff that's easier to use but 1 place that I that I that I ran into and that I know I've had people email email me about and perhaps this is where a lot of your support questions come from is d dev on windows with wsl two. If. That's if that is is that like ah, an area that's like rough for people or or is it just maybe me because I don't live in the windows space day to day.

Randy Fay: Yeah, so um, ws l two is an amazing way to use Dev and it's an amazing feature of windows. It's in It's supported by all existing supported versions of windows. But it's basically being able to run. Ah, linux inside windows and that um lets us run d dev inside windows so it's running d dev in a far more native world. You know d dev didev comes from mac or linux. Um, and in wsl two it's in Mac or linux I mean we've all we've supported windows traditional windows for years, but it's slow part mostly because of the file system and it does it. It's it's a little awkward but I have to say a lot of people like it there. But I'm always trying to get them to go to wsl too. So what are the frictions with wsltwo. There are um, there are probably 2 or 3 of them one is that it's often windows people coming into a Linux world. All of a sudden and. You know on windows you don't you're not used to the command line in the first place and you're certainly not used to just all the things that linux has available to you and it's just a different world. So that's a bit of friction.

Randy Fay: Ah, second issue is the networking issue with windows. They did this amazing thing on windows with wsl two where all the ports and all the networking are shared and even shared among more than 1 wsl 2 distro. Well, it's ah it's a feat of you know mastery that they could do that but it adds complexity and so people may have trouble with something on the windows side occupying port eighty or poor 44 43 for example. Or they might have it on the ws l two side see on on a mac or in linux there's only 1 place where that can go wrong on wsl two. There's at least 2 and maybe even more than two ways for it to go wrong and when you go chasing it. The ways to chase it are different on the windows side than they are in the wsltwo site and this is all for people who might not have been comfortable with the command line in the first place and for whom ah linux might be new so those are the things. Um. The other thing is the install has been like 14 steps long for Wl two. Um, it's really really long I have a Pr that I've been working on this week to make that 3 steps plus run 1 powershell script. So I think that will help.

Randy Fay: Um, but it won't solve all the problems but ah WsLTwo is so worthy at both in terms of performance and native behavior that it's a great place to go but I can't There's some people that like D Dev so much on. Traditional windows I Just can't I can't budge Them. Can't budge them at all.

Andrew: And yeah, and if I could I think that the problems that d dev runs into on wsl 2 as you mentioned they're sort of inherited from docker and the way that wsl two interfaces with windows because I'm someone that I mostly use a pure docker setup in the. Ah, local dev stuff that I do and I've done client work where we've had to get things working on Windows W S L two and there are a lot of gotchas like you mentioned and I don't think they're necessarily inherent to d dev they're more inherent to the docker wsl two windows kind of. Dichotomy. That's going on and ddev just kind of inherits it for instance for performance reasons you really want all of your projects to be inside of wsl 2 You don't want the to try and mount them from windows. Otherwise you're going to get atrocious performance and this is stuff that.

Randy Fay: Right.

Andrew: People that are approaching it for the first time who aren't experienced with it. It's it's a big gotcha that I see people running into. So yeah.

Randy Fay: That Yeah, there is a there's another facet of this problem and that is that people typically want to run their apps like Web browsers or Ph P storm on the windows side and that means. Opening the files in WsLTwo but still running the running D Dev and everything and because of the mastery that they did with networking that all works. But it's another layer of complexity then it's another layer that people don't understand out of the box. Um, Ph P storm is doing better at it. But it hasn't really arrived. Um and ah vs code has done wonderful things with it from the beginning so vs code is a great match for wsl 2 Because you just run code dot in your project on the in WsLTwo and it'll it'll use your vs code gui. But it's actually running a proxy in WSL two that does wonderful things So vs code has the the win. Still on that although ah Ph B storm keeps trying to catch up but they haven't caught up yet.

Andrew: They they're getting there I've seen some people that even will run ph p storm in WSLTwo because it will run on top of Java there's no nothing preventing it and it's going to look and work exactly the same but I totally get it. That's kind of weird for a lot of people that are used to running their windows apps Matt.

Randy Fay: That right? so.

Randy Fay: Exactly.

Matt: I speaking speaking of gotcha's ah I don't I don't want to brag I Don want to come across as somebody very self-important but you can give me any development environment. You can give me any development environment I can find a way to tank it I can find a way to ruin it I've done it. Um.

Randy Fay: Come on Brag brag.

Andrew: You're already known as you're already known as a braggart.

Matt: So I you know I feel like I have pretty good perspective on how to ruin ah your local dev environment I'm interested in if you were to award 1 issue from everything that you've seen that somebody's going to use ddev and they you know you don't know anything about them. Their environment. What is the 1 trophy winning. Issue that you can predict someone will have ah that they will run into or the most recurring popular gotcha that you've seen.

Randy Fay: And that is a great question. Um, over time when things pop up a lot. We try to fix them and you know nobody reads documentation so you can't fix stuff like that in documentation. Ah, but we can make D Dev complain ah about the mistakes that they might be making um but people do really quite amazing things. But Because. We're always trying to address the things that they do mostly? um, there isn't a winner I'm I'm apologizing I mean there's there's stuff that comes up every day but I don't think we have a winner right now. Um, you know the other day there was somebody that didn't understand. What a D Dev add on was which Dev has a capability of ah has a capability of using these additional supported components that you can add with just a ddev get so you can you can. You can add on solar for example or you can add on um Redis and ah not have to do that setup for yourself and somebody went to one of the things like that and they didn't understand that it was an add on.

Randy Fay: And they said could this be turned into an add-on and the reality is that all of us are always swimming in Murky Waters. We are always out there learning new things that we didn't really know before and everybody coming to D Dev. Is wandering into a world that they didn't know before you know, almost everybody. They're coming into a world that they didn't know before and there's a lot of people landing in web development that have never typed ls on a command line. Well. There's a whole bunch of layers when you land from any set of perspectives and there's so much to learn and you don't know what to learn you don't know how to learn it. You don't know how to get those layers added on it's so crazy impossible to sort that stuff out. Somebody wanted me to add into the Docs how you change directories to move into a different directory well from their perspective. You know that tells you something right.

Andrew: That that that resonates with me I mean speaking of living in Murky Waters I'm like that catfish in the dirty stream that people try to noodle out of the hole you know? So I totally understand. It's always murky Waters ben.

Randy Fay: I Yeah yeah.

Ben Croker: I got to say though like every once in a while a technical solution comes along to a problem that just feels right? like it feels like it's hit the spot. It's checked all the boxes and somehow I feel that d dev has gotten us to a place or we're finally at a place where. Local development feels ah like the barrier to entry is low enough that we can do it and we can set up team members with and and we can get on with what we love like local development environments is not something you think about when when you hear the word sexy. But. Randy Faye you've made it dare I say moderately desirable. So I commend you for that.

Randy Fay: Ah.

Andrew: Well, the best thing sometimes people I'll buy a new computer and they'll ask me? Well, how do you like it and the best compliment that I can give is I don't even think about it In other words I have no problems with it. It gets out of my way it does its thing.

Ben Croker: Um, right right? yeah.

Andrew: That's the way that I think about d dev as well because for local dev environment. You don't want to care as you're saying Ben about the local dev environment. You want to do the work that you need to get done and the the best compliment that I can give d dev is yeah I don't even think about it when I use it.

Randy Fay: Father that.

Ryan: But but getting back to Randy's point about someone asking for ah to document the Cd command like there still is a a like a base like threshold that people have to get past in order to use a tool like d dev it's not even though I consider it. Extremely easy to use with an an amazing developer experience. Um Andrew you asked when I was creating some material on d-dev I kept out a smile. My face goes like ah they thought of that too. Um, it's just and just configuring it. It's just all really nice but getting back to like um. Installing it on ah windows I think installing it on Mac Os is pretty straightforward but still if you're doing it via brew you you still have to know how to get brew running I mean I still think there's.

Randy Fay: You people don't know that yeah that's yeah yeah yeah I can't okay so on on linux you have to add brew to your path right? Um, and that's true on WsLTwoTwo so this might you asked what the top thing was.

Ryan: Right? Yeah, no, no I know because I wrote the full path to it just so I could get it running.

Randy Fay: The top thing probably yeah so that that might be the thing that people have asked more than anything else is how come I did the thing and I can't run brew. Um, now that is almost gone now because our preferred installation technique.

Ryan: Right.

Randy Fay: On linux and WSLTwo is app now. So we have app packages now so that will mean that it's always in the path and you don't have the home linux brew thing anymore. So that is a big win. Um, that's a big win I hadn't even thought about because that that would come up.

Andrew: Nice.

Ryan: Yeah.

Randy Fay: Every week at least is like I can't run brew I type brew and nothing happens or and and they do the same thing so this just goes back again to how many layers there are for any of us to work in any of these technologies is it people will say well I install d dev. But I get not found when I type it. Well they don't understand path to begin with right? Which like we all have a lot of things. We don't understand and that seems to those of us who've worked on the command line for decades that seems kind of silly. But It's just one of those things. It's like with all the web technologies that you guys work on. There are a thousand layers of things you have to know to use those web technologies and there really aren't any stupid questions. Um.

Andrew: I've heard 1 or 2 Maybe i.

Randy Fay: It there. Maybe there's 1 or 2 But but the reality the the problem in the tech world of too many layers to ever understand what layer is what and then to have the right amount of mastery of the layers that you need to use.

Andrew: Yeah, and like anything else. You don't know it until you do right? and it doesn't matter like you said how much experience you have how smart you are whatever that means technology is such that it's always evolving always changing. There's always something new. There's always something that you don't know.

Matt: And then it might be.

Randy Fay: It's hard. It's just hard.

Andrew: And we are really constructing it like an onion with you know thousands of layers and you're working at the very top. Yeah, so.

Randy Fay: For it's it's huge. The 1 thing that is so ah, really important. Ah, ah, we've always had a goal to have more of a gui interface or at least a text ui interface that wasn't just plain command line driven.

Matt: So well, then it's.

Randy Fay: But it never well at to at 1 time we had one. It may still work but it was unmaintainable. Didn't have tests things like that. Ah, but we and and and I don't see my path. You know, ah guey are huge. Well you you all work and. Web interfaces that are huge and guis are huge. They're huge to maintain. They're huge to test and I don't ever see them becoming a part of anything that I can handle myself. Although we have an open issue and I would love to see that issue succeed but I have to say. That the new phpahph b storm or really jetbrains um d dev integration plugin is awesome for those of you using ph p storm or any other jetbrains product to work on your Php stuff. The new plugin allows you to do. Many d dev things from within ph p storm by pushing buttons and that kind of thing. So actually you know great kudos to niko and his crew that made that happen that was a huge effort. Um, and so that php storm. Ddev integration plugin is a great step forward for people who are more likely to be in ph p storm than they are in the command line.

Andrew: I was actually going to ask you about a gui layer on top of this because I come from a Mac and ios development background and I was wondering if it might understand that there's this is yet another layer and it's yet another thing to maintain but I look at something like Docker Desktop and it's essentially just a gui wrapper for docker and you you fire it up and it gives you a little dashboard and it's kind of nice. But if you were able to do something like that. They would also give you the entree into the mac app store so that you could just get automatic updates and the installation. And the update would be a non-issue is that something that is on your radar open to Prs you know that kind of thing and.

Randy Fay: Well I mean it's certainly open to somebody wanting to work on it. Um, the I mean it would be. It would be perfectly perfectly fine to do agree that had a maintenance path and that had tests had automated tests right? so. Um, and that was useful to people I mean it I mean basically those are the 3 things it would have to be it would have to show value. It would have to have a maintenance path. You know so be sustainable and it would have to have good automated tests. But yes I'd love to do that. Um, I just haven't ever figured out how to fit it into my life I did I almost signed up for react class once to do a react wrapper on Dev and then I realized that I didn't have any time to begin with so I wasn't going to be able to do it with less Time. So I didn't do much.

Andrew: It? Well the way I was thinking of it would be if it was a just a gooi wrapper around what's already there you know, essentially it would be a gooi presentation for the cli. So so it would depend on all of the tests and everything that were in the actual thing. You know it be. It would be D Dev It would be the thing This would just have a little bit of a native layer that would report on the status and I was really thinking about it. Yes, there would be some use to the the gui you know dashboard that type of stuff but I was really thinking about it as an entree. Into the Mac App store to ease the installation and update process more than anything else.

Randy Fay: So I think we could do that Regardless so for the Mac App store I'm pretty sure we could just bundle it up as ah, you know as a binary inside a um install Package. So I don't think that I think those are two separate things. And I think that we could We could make an installer package that could go on the app store and that actually.

Andrew: I I don't know if they the Apple has standards for how they evaluate these things and they might or might not accept that and be worth a shot though.

Randy Fay: And you know more than I do yep. So.

Matt: So I'd like to Randy I'd like to offer you Andrew ah Andrew Welch he has ah he has a background in this and a lot of strong opinions. So.

Ryan: Ah, so good.

Randy Fay: Yeah, yeah I can tell by the way he's talking that he's obviously a candidate and that's a great idea. Yes I like it so that the dwi that did exist um and is still out there.

Matt: And it's very passionate.

Andrew: I I don't have I don't have strong opinions I don't I just speak loudly That's all.

Randy Fay: Um, was a react-based wrapper that we just wrapped Dev and it's the reason that ddep commands have Json output so every d dev command you can add dash j to it and you get the output in Json. Um.

Andrew: Right.

Randy Fay: And it just didn't ever meet the it I mean some people liked it so it didn't get enough traction to know whether people would find real value in it in the end but it couldn't meet the other 2 ah goals. Of being sustainable from a development perspective and having automated tests. Um, and so you know like you just work with it for a few minutes and you'd find a hole in it. Um, and you'd work with it another few minutes and you'd find another hole and all of us are used to holes like that in.

Andrew: So yep.

Randy Fay: Products we use but it's not exactly what we want. It's.

Andrew: Yeah again I at least to me the value or the initial value in something like that would be to take care of the installation and update Process. You're like okay we're in the app store you want to install it click a button. And then you can just turn on Automatic updates. It'll automatically update and you just don't have to worry about any of that which ah.

Randy Fay: I I'm like you know like if you sort that out to just I mean we have um you know we do sign and notarize that's another maturity thing about d dev is our is our binaries are signed and they're notarized both on Mac and windows and. That is not the norm for lots of things. Um, so we already have everything set up with Apple. We already have all the stuff to notarize it and if we built a package instead of um if we built this package instead of just the ah binary. Um, we would be already there to do the rest of the stuff so that's a good project for you and I appreciate you taking it on.

Andrew: Yeah, and I think that if you did something like that you would want to have as part of your automated workflow when you cut a release if there was a way to do it to have it automatically build build the package and submit the update to Apple you know you'd want that to be a process that just yeah.

Randy Fay: Oh we could I'm sure we could ah we could already do that I'm quite sure we could do that in the release process. So yeah I mean um I since since you have expertise in that area if you find that it is legit to wrap a.

Andrew: Ah, perfect. Yeah.

Randy Fay: Ah, binary in an install package. Um, it has potential. It's I mean just so that's only part of what you were talking about. But that part has some value and ah there.

Andrew: Yeah.

Randy Fay: There are actually monetization ideas that could be there too. Somebody might want to pay $5 for it or something like that.

Andrew: You sure? Yeah, absolutely and I got to admit I got to confess I Appreciate you nominating me but I'm I'm a filthy liar I've never done any Mac or ios development before my life. In fact I don't even do web development I just get on here and talk about stuff. So.

Matt: It's it's the passion that counts Andrew as as as we used to say as we used to say at a place earlier in my career journey. Ah, it sounds like you've got an idea there Andrew.

Randy Fay: Ah, there you go I like it there we go.

Andrew: I I have many ideas most of my ideas shouldn't see the light of day but I have many ideas but I think we might as well end it there where I have been volunteered for servitude you can't do what I you can't do to me what I do to you Matt it's just unfair. It's unfair.

Ben Croker: So specific.

Matt: I I don't know well.

Andrew: But that about wraps it up for another episode of the demo fm podcast to have every every episode sent to you subscribe to our Rs feed subscribe to our Rss feed or via Itunes or Google play or the demo fm podcast I'm Andrew Welch

Ben Croker: And I'm Ben Croker from put your lights on.

Matt: And I'm at Stein.

Ryan: I'm Ryan iron.

Andrew: I and thank you so much Randy Faye for coming on I appreciate it.

Randy Fay: It and it it was a delight. It was wave fun meeting you guys.

Ben Croker: Thanks Randy.

Matt: You you can't even see Andrew's guitar but he's very good.

Andrew: I all right Randy so I did I actually double lied I actually do I used to do mac and ios development but I'll tell you what it's been a while since I've done it and I've got my son who wanted to do something with it. He's like yeah I'm trying to do this thing in Xcode and I'm like all right I'll try to help you out and then I'm sitting there working with it I'm like oh my god I don't. Like everything is totally different than the way it was before like I don't know how anything works it took us like an hour to solve something. Super simple. So the the capability is there? maybe? Well we'll see.

Randy Fay: Ah, ah you sound like you're just the right person for the job.

Matt: Enough? Yeah, and I just want to I know it's probably confusing with the video. But um I'm not actually Andrews Child so he's not legally allowed to give me away.

Ben Croker: So.

Andrew: You're my second I'm allowed to volunteer you and you know you need to do something other than planting avocados all right I'm going to stop the Becca stop off stopping the backup recording stopping the actual recording.

Randy Fay: And.

Matt: Ryan needs to eat. Well.

Ryan: Right? I need to eat.

devMode.fm

DDEV for Local Development

10 retweets

16 likes

7 mentions

Recent Episodes